


Advent Calendar

by sap1066



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-01
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-09 07:05:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 24
Words: 22,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12882657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sap1066/pseuds/sap1066
Summary: Nine/Rose. Sex. Romance. 24 days. 24 positions.





	1. Chapter 1

On the first of December, the Doctor took Rose up the aisle. He was well aware of all the implications that usually accompanied that comment, both the romantic and the nudge-nudge wink-wink variety, but he decided to ignore them. They were in a church, after all, and there was technically, an aisle, even if most of the pews had gone missing and the others were leaning on each other for support. Rain slanted in through the broken windows.  
  
Rose shuffled her feet through the piles of shifting leaves on the floor. She wasn’t even wearing a dress, and the closest to white she came was the overly blonde brightness of her hair, the result of a dyeing accident with some sort of alien product that did not do exactly what it said on the tin.   
  
‘Why’re we here?’ she asked plaintively.  
  
He shrugged. ‘Mistake,’ he admitted, not for the first time. ‘But I’m only a couple of hundred years out. This used to be a great place for dancing. All those people singing, all the plate smashing, the cake, the sound of laughter everywhere you went.’  
  
She looked around at the moss covered walls dubiously. ‘Dancing?’   
  
She never got sick of dancing. He had taken her halfway round the universe in search of the best places to dance, and he still wasn’t tired of the excuse to take her in his arms and spend a couple of hours just looking at her.   
  
He crossed to where she stood, bowed formally, extended his hand. ‘Shall we?’ he asked, having lost count of the number of times he had said the same thing over the last couple of months.   
  
She frowned. ‘But there’s no music, or lights, or people or anything. And I haven’t got a dress on.’ She had noticed that too.  
  
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said, sweeping her into the familiar position they always took. ‘You’re beautiful as you are.’  
  
His arm was on her waist, her fingers clasped in his, her eyes searching his face. ‘Really?’ she questioned, biting her lip. ‘Not ‘for a human’, or ‘in the dark’, or ‘from behind’, or any of the other things you usually say?’  
  
He wished he’d had the guts to just tell her how he felt about her without constantly needing to qualify it. He did the next best thing. Slowly, carefully, and giving her every single possible chance to see what he was planning and pull away he inched his mouth closer and closer towards hers. She didn’t pull away. She did anything but pull away. With a graceful, smooth glide she took half a step forward, ending up pressed firmly against him, he face tilted upwards, looking into his eyes as his lips came further and further down. He could feel her breath in his open mouth.  
  
Their lips touched. She took a deep breath, held it, poised on the edge of a plunge, and dived in. She kissed him back.   
  
He kissed her like a dam had broken inside him and all the passion and desire he had felt for months was coming flooding out at once. He kissed her and he held her to him as her hands came up, under his leather coat, feeling their way beneath his jumper to his skin. He kissed her, one of his hands running upwards from her waist on its own, over the toned muscles in her left arm, around the front of her top to caress her breast.   
  
He felt her shiver as he cupped her softness, learning the weight and the roundness of her. She pushed off his coat. He unzipped her top, snapped open her bra without looking, letting both hands play across her chest. His fingers circled her breasts in concentric rings, spiralling closer to the hard nipples waiting at their centre. He heard her moan softly into his mouth, felt her shiver, and stopped kissing her just long enough to shift his jumper off.   
  
She arched her neck as the coolness of his fingers found her taut, hot skin, flicking and pulling at the darker flesh, teasing her, tormenting her, making her open her legs, just a little as the pleasure gathered. He felt the movement, swung one hand downwards, his fingers reaching for the warmth at the top of her thighs. He pressed his hand to her through her jeans, hearing her moan again, watching as her head jerked backwards, away from his kiss.   
  
He lifted her easily, kicked open his discarded coat amidst the fallen leaves, laid her down on her back on the floor. He joined her there, shoes off, bending his head to take one of her breasts into his mouth as his hand popped the button on her jeans, pushed further into the dark, unseen space beneath, began to stroke her through the tight material of her knickers.   
  
Her hips raised up to meet the pressure of his fingers, one arm wrapped around his head, refusing to let him stop the sucking, biting intensity he was giving her. Her other hand struggled to push off her trousers. He helped her without being asked, getting rid of her underwear at the same time, and burying his fingers into the mound of her hair.  
  
She was making strangled moaning noises that grew louder as he found the right place to touch her, setting up a fast-slow rhythm that was matched by her breathing. He shifted position, entering her with one finger, with his thumb pressing against her, quickening his pace. As he pushed in another finger her legs came together, raising her off the floor. She was panting heavily. Hs own breathing was none too steady as he peeled off his own jeans with his free hand, gently nudging her legs apart as he moved on top of her.   
  
He waited there, close, but not inside her, watching the pounding of her heart under her skin, the red flush on her face. Her eyes flickered open and the way she was looking at him left him in no doubt about what she wanted.  
  
He thrust forward, feeling her moist slickness enclose him, driving as far into her as he could go before pulling out, rushing back inside her again and again. Her nails bit into his back. Her body curved upwards against him and he could feel the shudders of her climax thundering through her before he let himself come at last.   
  
As he collapsed on top of her he could nearly hear the echoes of happiness reverberating down the years, captured inside the walls of this church.  
  
There was a reason that was called the missionary position, he thought, sending up a silent prayer of thanks to anything that might be listening.   
  
Rolling off her, he scooped up her and his jacket together headed off back to the TARDIS.


	2. Chapter 2

On the second of December Rose Tyler woke to find herself in the Doctor’s bed for the first time. It came as quite a shock. She remembered the church, and she remembered the dancing, but the rest of it had been a bit of a surprise to say the least. After so many months of waiting for him to make a move, the Doctor had finally decided to kiss her, and then do more than kiss her. And on the floor of a church as well. Her grandparents would have been horrified, although her mother was hardly a nun.   
  
The room was dark, but she was warm, naked under a heap of sheets and covers, the unmistakeable canopy of a four poster bed above her. But more than that the Doctor was wrapped round her like a second skin, sleeping peacefully.  
  
She could feel the double beat-beat of his hearts against her back, his arm around her waist and lower, and slightly more uncomfortably, the hard heat of his arousal pressing into her bottom. It must be morning, she thought, and she had her own personal alarm clock.   
  
She was so happy she wanted to spring out of bed and shake the TARDIS with the force of her laughter. There was a delicious sliding smoothness between her legs this morning, the remembrance of the previous day and it gave her a wicked idea.   
  
He had surprised her yesterday hadn’t he? And it really was time he woke up. Moving carefully, so as not to rouse him — yet — she rotated her hips slightly, tilted backwards, pushed herself down gently, but firmly onto the erection prodding into her from below. When he was fully inside her she closed her eyes, squeezed every muscle she had as tightly together as possible.  
  
She felt him wake up with a start, pushing forward into her, making her gasp at how deeply he was touching her, before he realised where — exactly —he was. His arm tightened around her waist as he yanked her back against him, skin to skin along the whole length of her body.   
  
He breathed into her ear, nibbled an earlobe. ‘Good morning,’ he said.  
  
‘Morning,’ she replied politely, as he took the hint and ground his hips into her.  
  
Rocking back against him, moving in time with the unhurried vigour of his strokes she felt his hand over her hip, trailing downwards, finding her warm and waiting, his fingers pressing her flesh in time with the push-pull motion inside her. Her orgasm built slowly this time, the throbbing between her legs getting more and more insistent.   
  
‘Now,’ she gasped. ‘Now.’  
  
But he didn’t vary his pattern and continued the slow crescendo inside her, as she grabbed hold of the pillows, clawed the edge of the bed, stretching towards release. It occurred to her, between the cries that the burning heat drew from her lips, that this was probably his revenge.   
  
When she finally came, it was a longer and more through climax that she had ever felt, lacing through her body, soothing all her muscles, calling her into sleep again. She felt him try to hold himself steady as the buried part of him shuddered inside her, and his slow exhalation told her how totally he had let go.  
  
‘Up you get then,’ he said, but she was already asleep.


	3. Chapter 3

On the third of December he took her Christmas shopping. He was sure it was too early, and in any case, he had no intention of being anywhere near anything her mother had cooked in twenty two days time. They stepped out of the TARDIS and into the bustling square of a market, the sky bright blue overhead, the cobbles frosted beneath their feet.  
  
He didn’t know whether to hold her hand or not.  
  
Usually, he wouldn’t have thought twice about it, but this time, after the last two days, he wanted to hold her hand properly, with everything that meant. She looked at him out of the comer of her eye. Nervously, he stretched out and he knew he had done the right thing when she beamed at him, grabbed his hand and hauled him off through the crowd.   
  
It took him nearly twenty minutes to regret his decision and another forty before he wished she would let go and stop asking his opinion on useless trinkets. After two hours he was sorry he'd ever met her, after four, sorry he’d ever been born. Or grown. Or loomed. Or whatever. He couldn’t remember anymore. After six hours he was so pleased to see the TARDIS that he even ran over to hug it, promising never, ever to leave it alone again. He was carrying so many bags and parcels, he could hardly get through the doors, turned into Rose’s personal packhorse and chauffeur. It was at times like this, he thought to himself grimly, that he was actually glad he was the last of the Time Lords. He could practically hear them laughing at him from beyond the grave, particularly when one of the biggest boxes he was carrying slipped and hit him on the foot. He swore, and oncoming-stormed his way off to the library.   
  
When he had calmed down enough to worry where she’d got to the ship was cold and dark. He’d forgotten to leave the corridor lights on again, having cannibalised the automatic circuit for parts some time ago. He looked in all her usual haunts, the kitchen, the cinema, the pool, the kitchen again, before tracking her down to the big white bathroom on the second floor.  
  
She was dressed only in a fluffy white towelling dressing gown, and she was asleep, lying on her front on a chaise longue, a bath filled and gone cold by her side. Her hair was spread in a halo around her face. She murmured as she heard the door close behind him, but he shushed her back to sleep, sliding out of his clothes and into the companion robe hanging on the wall. It was a very long time since this room had been used, but he still remembered where to find the right shelves.   
  
Carrying a stack of sweet smelling bottles he crossed to the daybed, gently stripped off her robe and rubbed his hands to warm them up a bit. He knew he was always colder than she was, and usually, it didn’t matter, especially since the heat of his blood tended to raise his temperature when he was aroused. But he didn’t want to wake her up with his best snowman impression so he blew on his fingers before pouring out some of the purple oil onto her shoulders.   
  
He took off his own robe and straddled her, his hips resting just above the smooth curve of her bottom. The smell of lavender filled his senses and he began to rub the mixture into her skin with sure, practiced strokes. She was only half asleep now, barely conscious, and she gave a long drawn out sigh of contentment at the pressure of his hands as they smoothed out the knots in her shoulders.   
  
With the red oil and the smell of roses he worked his way down her spine, getting into his stride, knowing just how to touch her to loosen her tension. Her bones felt amazingly fragile, almost as if he held the thread of her life in his hands. He didn’t want to think about what might happen if it snapped.  
  
His oily fingers massaged relaxation into the small of her back, went lower, changing to the white bottle, perfumed with lilies. He spent longer than was really necessary kneading her bottom, watching fascinated as it flexed and sprang back into place under the squeeze of his hands. His forearms were slick as he spread her legs apart slightly, taking even longer over her thighs, lingering on the smooth silk of the skin between them, just in case that part of her was particularly exhausted. She gave a heavy, sleep filled sigh and shifted herself open a bit wider as his fingers measured a travelling line between her knee and the join of her legs.   
  
Orange was for calves and feet and the oriental tang of the flowers made him dizzy, although there wasn’t a lot left. By the time he had finished with her legs he had run out. Her feet stared at him reproachfully, the only part of her body that wasn’t satin and shining. So he lifted up her foot, and because he wasn’t sure she would like it, put her big toe in his mouth, sucking on it with an infinitesimal pressure. He watched her hips raise up off the daybed at him as he drew another toe into his mouth, licking both with a slightly harder rasp.   
  
She stretched her arms above her head, her legs parting and another weighty sigh escaped her lips. From this angle, he could see almost right up inside her and he was sure that the wetness that rested there had nothing to do with the contents of his bottles. She murmured something that he couldn’t hear, but the slight lift of her hips again told him a tale he didn’t miss.   
  
He reached for the last container, smaller than the rest, shook out the viscous fluid it held and rubbed it into himself. Then, he climbed up her body gently, laid down on top of her, supporting his weight on his hands. And because he had wanted her as soon as he entered the room, helped by the oil he glided inside her with the blissful ease of a summer day, mild and calm. He hung over her while time turned on outside, hardly stirring as he guided himself inside and back out again, taking care not to disturb her dreamy slumbers. He could see the ripples of pleasure that spread through her like a stone thrown into a pool ad he waited until she subsided before pulling out, covering her up and walking away.  
  
He had spent the whole of the third of December just trying to make her happy, and that was satisfaction enough. 


	4. Chapter 4

The fourth of December was a Monday and when Rose Tyler woke up she was in a Very Bad Mood. There wasn’t any reason to be. It wasn’t as if she had to go to work anymore, but she thought that hating Mondays was genetically wired into her psyche, as it was for most of the inhabitants of twenty first century Earth. Plus, she was lying in a four poster bed all on her own, which, as far as she was concerned, was a complete waste of time.  
  
The Doctor had leaped out of the covers at about four in the morning, crying ‘Fantastic’ loudly enough to wake the dead and then gone off singing into the ensuite bathroom. His cheerfulness made her more annoyed. She dragged her way out of bed annoyed, had an annoyed shower, got dressed in an outfit that annoyed her least, and went off to pick a fight.   
  
The bags and parcels of her Christmas shopping dumped in the corridor stopped her, and she took them all back to the bedroom again, sorting out the various presents and storing them away. She had agonised long and hard over what to buy the Doctor. What did you get for the man who had nothing, except about sixteen square feet of blue box and endless possibilities? Her first choice, she thought, rubbing her chin ruefully, would have been a slightly more effective razor. The stubble burn was starting to become an issue.   
  
In her underwear drawer she stashed what she'd bought him in the minute she’d been able to slip away. Then she realised she had an underwear drawer. And a sock drawer. And a cupboard full of t-shirts. And a wardrobe with all her jeans hung up neatly. Someone, or something, had whisked all of her belongings into his room without being asked. And hung them up. That was just plain rude. Only her mother was allowed to do that. She stormed into the console room, tugging her temper behind her like an invisible cloud.   
  
The Doctor looked up, started to smile and then frowned. She threw herself onto the jumpseat, crossed her arms.   
  
‘How long?’ he asked.  
  
‘How long what?’ she snapped back. She was hoping to get in a few good insults before he realised she was in a Very Bad Mood and left her alone. It was the common male reaction. The Doctor wasn’t a common male.  
  
‘How long till you smile again?’ he repeated levelly.   
  
‘Dunno — how long you got? A day? Six months? Ten years? Longer if you keep asking stupid questions.’   
  
He checked his watch. ‘Ten minutes.’  
  
‘What?’  
  
‘You’ll be smiling in ten minutes,’ he promised, walking over towards her and plonking himself on the seat. He kicked off his shoes, chucked his coat over the railing, patted his lap. ‘Climb on,’ he said.  
  
She gaped. Gave a horrified look around the console room, which was resolutely refusing to turn into anywhere a bit more private. ‘But we can’t. It’s…It's Monday morning.’  
  
‘There’s no one else here,’ he replied. ‘And besides — in space, no one can hear you scream.’  
  
Her lips twitched. She climbed on, sitting on his lap facing him, one leg bent back on either side. He had that cocksure expression floating around the corners of his eyes again, and her bad mood returned with a vengeance.   
  
But it was very hard not to smile when you were being kissed, she found. Particularly when the man doing the kissing seemed to know exactly how and where to kiss you to make you go weak at the knees. The Doctor buried his hands in her hair, let go of her mouth, brought his lips around in a brushing whisper to her ear, breathing into it gently, making her shiver. His hands were rubbing up and down her back, digging the catch of her bra into her spine before he flicked open the fastening. She felt her breasts hanging free underneath her t-shirt, and the spider-light touch of his cool fingers up her stomach as he crawled over her body.  
  
He pulled back, looking her square in the eye as she sat, unmoving, on top of him, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders. She kept her face very, very blank and as still as possible when his stretching hands reached her nipples, giving both a hard tweak. She bit her lip. He cupped the sides of her breasts, running his thumbs frenetically over her skin, bringing her flesh up into hard little balls of pleasure. Her body was betraying her. There was dampness already between her legs.   
  
He gazed right at her, one eyebrow raised, deliberately turned his arm, checked his watch. She stayed silent, steady, staring back at him, although she was whimpering inside. She couldn’t help making the tiniest of tiny movements to press his body more tightly against the right spot between her thighs. He was sickeningly perceptive. He stripped off her t-shirt, leaving her chest exposed to the empty eyes of the console room. He didn’t touch her, didn’t take her nipples into his mouth to warm them up like she wanted him to.   
  
Instead, and very deliberately, he undid the button of her jeans, inched down the zip and smoothed his fingers between her thighs. Her bad mood had completely evaporated. All that was left was the soft wet noise as the Doctor moved his hand forwards and backwards within her jeans in the echoing silence of the room. She could feel him watching her, the burn of his stare. She had to close her eyes. The speed of his hand continued, stroking her faster and faster, and she tried so hard not to move, not to cry out, that her fists gripped his shoulders with a band of iron.  
  
And then he stopped. She was right on the edge and he stopped. ‘Nine minutes,’ he said. ‘Give up?’  
  
Hot tendrils of fire were still shooting through her stomach, she could feel her own wetness on her legs and she wanted nothing more than for his hand to start moving again. Hanging her head at last, she nodded.  
  
He bodily lifted her up and off him, removing her trousers in a matter of seconds, fiddling with his own. Then she was sitting back on top of him again, and he was inside her, filling her, as his fingers continued their dark magic and she cried out his name. He grabbed her to him as she came, the sharp moans forcing out of her lips stretching her mouth wide, a rictus smile. Finishing off with a few jabbing drives upwards, his own climax was the final edge on her contentment.  
  
She smiled at him at last, and he looked a little relieved. ‘That’s the best Monday morning I ever had,’ she said.


	5. Chapter 5

By the fifth of December the Doctor knew he had made a terrible mistake. A horrible, awful, dreadful miscalculation of the worst kind that he was going to be paying for all evening. The feral shine in Rose’s eyes told him so. She was not pleased. Not pleased at all.  
  
He thought that brown wool shift she had on was quite becoming, in an I-hope-she’s-not-wearing-anything-underneath-it kind of a way. He liked a woman in a skirt. The redness of her cheeks and the way she kept scratching her neck significantly at him against the high collar suggested it was not all that pleasant to wear though. The fact that he was sitting on a cart with the other men and watching the women grub up potatoes in the field must have added insult to injury. He watched her bend over with appreciation, shifting slightly to get a better view. She strained to heave another bagload of dirt and roots out of the ground.   
  
Technically, potatoes were chips. At least, that was going to be his excuse for dumping them in some backwards agricultural community at the tag end of nowhere. Even he had been slightly surprised to find that instead of salt and vinegar and chipforks, they had found unwashed yokels, dirt, and forks of the pitch variety.   
  
He hadn’t really had a lot of choice when they had asked him what he was doing either. ‘We’re,’ he started, until, looking round at the exclusively bearded faces around him he realised what a patriarchal society this must be.  
  
‘I’ve come to join the village,’ he began again, ignoring Rose and earning himself a dig in the ribs.   
  
‘She a good worker?’ asked one.  
  
The Doctor shrugged. ‘She tries hard. She’s not very skilled.’   
  
She stood on his foot.  
  
‘You’ve got a day,’ replied the lead bumpkin. ‘If she proves herself, you can stay.’  
  
And so Rose had spent all day up to her pretty little backside in mud, digging up the potatoes he had promised she’d be eating. He was, without doubt, going to pay later. But in the meantime, he pulled his jacket closer around him in the chill, called out to her across the field.  
  
‘You missed one,’ and watched her bend over for him again.  
  
The dress hit the floor the minute she stamped her way back through the TARDIS doors, having managed to slip away at dusk. He was waiting for her, a steaming cup of tea in his hands, his feet up on the console. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her so angry.   
  
She marched over, prodded his shoulder as he gave her his biggest, most loveable smile. ‘You. Bedroom. Now,’’ she grated, slamming out of the room.   
  
He was waiting on the four poster when she got out of the shower, a towel wrapped around her. He had dimmed the lights and tried his best to find a scented candle or something in the cupboards to calm her down. He opened his mouth to try his explanation, found her kissing him hard instead. She backed away quickly though, climbed on the bed beside him, yanked off his coat.  
  
‘Chips,’ she muttered, ripping off his jumper. ‘You said chips. Not pre-chips. Not almost chips. Not round, covered in muck that I have to dig out of the ground myself, chips.’   
  
His shoes were off by now, and she had pushed him back prone against the sheets, working on his belt. He was too scared to stop her, didn’t really want to try. His belt hit the floor, jeans were unfastened and she braced herself off the end of the bed, tugging off his trousers, one leg, and then the other.   
  
She stared at him in his underwear, hands on her hips. ‘She tries hard,’ she mimicked, putting on a passable impression of his accent. She dropped the towel. ‘But she’s not very skilled. I’ll show you just how skilled I am, shall I?’  
  
His body answered for him, rising in response. His underwear went the same way as his jeans and without pausing, she straddled him, her hands on his chest. As her tightness covered the tip of his arousal he started to drive upwards into her warmth, earning himself a slap on the arm. She raised up off him again until he lay still. Then gently, fractionally, slowly, she lowered herself down. But when she had got past the sensitive head of his skin again, she pulled up, backed off, before lowering down again, taking a bit more of him in and then letting him go. Every time he moved, she got off him. If he lay quiet, passive, he was rewarded with a little bit more of her hot warmth.   
  
By the time he was buried completely inside her more than an hour had passed and he had apologised so many times that he had run out of words. The only one he could remember was ‘please’. She took pity on him at last, seeing in the sweat stained hardness of his chest, the trembling of his stomach muscles as he held himself back, his gritted teeth, that he had paid enough. She rode him, sliding herself up and down against him only a couple of times before he released inside her with a frantic, long silenced cry. She was far too tired to do any more than fall limply against his chest.  
  
When she woke, several hours later, disturbed by the weight of him getting back into bed, and the feel of his arm around her shoulders , lifting her up, she found that he really was sorry, and that he did know how to make up for his mistakes.  
  
There was an enormous bag of chips on a tray in front of her, and a tiny rose lying next to it. It was possibly the most romantic meal she’d ever seen. 


	6. Chapter 6

On December 6th the Doctor had a lie in. It was at least 6am and he hadn’t woken up, so Rose decided to spend a nice long time in the shower, without worrying that he’d be tapping his foot impatiently somewhere, waiting for her to get dressed.  
  
She had just got up a good lather on her hair and she was belting out some terrible song or other when he stumbled round the screen and barged her out of the way, standing right under the single jet of water. Soap poured into her eyes and she spluttered, poked him in the ribs.  
  
‘Out,’ she ordered. ‘Now.’  
  
He still looked exhausted from the previous evening, but that was no excuse for poor bathroom etiquette.  
  
He frowned at her through the battering noise of the water, shrugged, and meddled with some sort of control that shifted the overhead pour into steaming rivers that leaped out of the sides of the enclosure. Then he picked her up, pushed her back against the wall with his hands behind her, spread her legs apart and shoved himself inside her. He had his usual morning rush on, but it was only the fact that they were both covered in water and soapsuds that stopped him hurting her at all.  
  
She opened her mouth with shock, crossing her legs over his hips to stop herself slipping down the tiles, her arms slung desperately about his neck for support. Eyes closed, water streaming down his face he backed out, took her again, and again, the breath rushing out of her body every time they crashed together.  
  
It didn’t hurt, but it was fierce, and hard, and very, very deep, impossibly deep. So deep, in fact, that she felt parts of her opening fully to let him in, her body splitting wider as he seemed to start hitting some buried, hidden spot that hadn’t been touched before. Friction mounted in the blink of an eye; he shifted roughly between her legs and she found herself panting for air. She could feel every inch of him rubbing inside her, thick and hot.  
  
She came. Without transition, like a switch had been thrown, electricity jolted through her and she came, came fast and strong, clawing into his shoulders with her head lolling back against the wall. She came with an abandon so complete a shout ripped from her throat and she didn’t hear it. She came so intensely that her legs straightened out involuntarily, the tips of her toes pointing as all her muscles quivered in the headlong dash to ecstasy. The dizziness of orgasm overwhelmed her and she had to close her eyes, impaling herself on his body in wild, uncontrollable spasms. He kept moving inside her, forcing her to more and more violent contractions, an eruption of pleasure slamming into her that lasted so long it was almost painful. Her climax seemed to start in the centre of her chest and spill outwards, harbingers of joy rushing past on heady wings. She felt warm all over, the feeling concentrated around her heart, far more widespread and lasting than the usual tingling aftermath she felt after he took his fingers away. At length, the desperate clench of her thighs around his hips eased.  
  
He grunted, dropped out of her and set her down on her feet. Then he went back to bed.   
  
When she regained enough control to walk, she marched after him, demanding explanations. ‘What the hell was that about?’ she threw at his somnolent form.  
  
‘Heard you in trouble. Thought you said ‘now’,’ he mumbled. That wasn’t a very good answer.  
  
‘That was singing. And I didn’t mean your sort of ‘now’,' she retorted. ‘Since when do you do anything I want anyway?’  
  
He responded indistinctly, turning over. ‘Love your smile. Give you anything. Go anywhere. To make you happy.’ That was a very good answer indeed. 


	7. Chapter 7

The seventh of December was a day of rest. It was a day of enforced rest because the TARDIS was broken. Rose was actually amazed that the ship had managed to go for a whole week without needing to be fixed or accidentally crash-landing somewhere nasty. The TARDIS never, ever accidentally crash-landed somewhere nice, somewhere with beaches, or chocolate, or friendly aliens bearing gifts. Besides, this particular meltdown was just a little too convenient.   
  
She had decided to take the Doctor at his word. And the word she had chosen was ‘anything’. He’d said he’d give her anything she wanted, as long as it made her happy. Anything she wanted included shopping again, and he had already proved that he didn’t mind trailing round after her for hours at a time, considerately not disturbing her by speaking. He was also willing to carry far more than any of her other boyfriends ever had.   
  
That was a very strange thought. She looked at the Doctor, and she thought ‘boyfriend’ in her head and the two images jumped apart immediately. He wasn’t boyfriend material. She wasn’t sure what he was. She wasn’t sure whether this would even count as a relationship or not. She was determined to find out. But first — shopping.  
  
His eyes had become very fixed, glassy almost, when she suggested it.  
  
‘Fantastic,’ he agreed. ‘Had a great day last time,’ but the smile he gave her was unnatural. Men didn’t generally smile when she said ‘shopping’ to them.  
  
Then the TARDIS had suddenly, and unaccountably broken and he said it would take all day to fix. She noted suspiciously that there was almost a spring in his step as he rifled through the cabinets hidden in the walls and got out his toolkit. And he was humming. Which was how she came to be standing at the bottom of a ladder watching his firm backside wiggling around in front of her face. Beaches had nothing on this view.   
  
His trousers were lovely and tight, the material outlining the nicely curved cheeks inside, strong and toned with running. She couldn’t tell if he was wearing any underwear today. He usually did, but she was ever hopeful that he might forget. She had a great desire to give his bottom a squeeze. She wasn’t entirely sure she had the right to touch him at all, outside the bedroom, if he didn’t start first. That was another thing she needed to find out.  
  
So she gave him a little press, more of a pinch really, before she snatched her hand back, flushing with her own temerity. His humming stopped. And then started again, a bit louder. She didn’t dare look up at him. She reached up again, and had another go, a bit harder this time. He still did nothing. So she let both hands explore him for as long as they wanted. He was whistling a little song when she finally stopped, and she wasn’t sure she had ever seen him so happy, perched on a ladder with that stupid light on his head, up to his elbows in wires and circuits. She thought about December the third, and the mammoth shopping trip he had endured without complaint, and the very nice dream she had had in the bathroom later. A dream that was so real she woke up smelling of flowers. She decided that today, she would try and make him happy.  
  
So she moved around the other side of the ladder, but she didn’t look up again as she undid the button on his jeans. His whistling stopped. The noise his zip made as she lowered it was very loud in the silence. She had to pull his trousers down a bit to get a better look. The underwear question was resolved. He had definitely forgotten. She was smiling as she took him in her mouth.   
  
Although she could nearly fit him all in at first, he hardened almost immediately, and she had to pull back a bit to keep from being choked. She set her lips to the top of his erection and slowly pushed down until she had the whole head in her mouth. She had great fun with the popping sound she discovered when she pulled back and sucked him in again ever so slowly, over and over. Then, she tried to see how much of him she could get in her mouth all at one go from different angles, and when she had worked that out she found she could definitely taste him. He had a strange taste too, salty, not unpleasant but unusual. She couldn’t quite decide what he tasted of so she sucked him as hard as she could to see if she could get a bit more. He liked that, and she had more than enough opportunity roll his flavour over her tastebuds, although she still couldn’t find a name for it.   
  
She decided to stop playing. She circled her tongue down the whole length of his arousal, licking every scrap of skin and nerve ending she could find. Returning to the tip, she raised her hands, briskly rubbing backwards and forwards as she used her teeth on his head, and light flicks of her tongue over the tiny slit at the top. Her hands stroked up as her mouth came down, meeting in the middle. She had no idea what he was doing, or whether he was watching her. She could only feel him shaking as he pushed himself more urgently into her mouth. She encouraged him again with another determined suck and she heard him cry out her name, her mouth flooded with his taste, trickling down her throat.   
  
She smiled, packed him away again and went out to make them both a cup of tea. It seemed she was allowed to touch him any way she wanted, anywhere and at any time. And that made her happier than she could believe. 


	8. Chapter 8

On December the eighth Rose Tyler wore a skirt. A short one. The Doctor had a thing for skirts. With possessive eyes he watched the skirt all day. He watched it walk down the ramp and leave the TARDIS. He watched it stand beside him, get introduced, get nosy, get into trouble and run away home.  
  
Later, he discovered that the skirt wasn’t hiding much underneath. Knelt on the floor, head cradled between a pair of willing thighs, his tongue spent over an hour teaching the owner of the skirt to be very, very grateful that skirts were ever invented. 


	9. Chapter 9

They lasted until December 9th before having an argument. Snuggled up to him later, she was grateful to have got it over with. He wouldn’t be her Doctor without a bit of angst after all. In fact, that faraway look had been missing from his eyes since the beginning of the month, and he had stopped wandering off into his strange sad silences. The haunting air of loneliness he dragged around like a ball and chain had almost completely disappeared. And she had certainly been able to put a smile on his face more than a few times. She shifted more closely against his chest.   
  
He felt her move, and tightened his arm around her, planting a kiss on the top of her head. Resuming his study of the canopy above he tried to remember how many, many nights he had spent awake, lying alone in this bed, while all around him the ship dozed in silent emptiness, teeming with the ghosts of his past. But now, he was sleeping again, whenever Rose let him, and the nightmares scarcely bothered him. He could count every single hour he had spent with her over the last nine days, replay every second of her company. And he knew it was never going to be enough. He could live years with her, and it would never be enough. That was why they had argued.  
  
The evening started off well. They agreed to go dancing again. She put on a dress so stunning he wanted to take it off immediately. Preferably with his teeth. Modesty forbade him from saying so.  
  
‘What do you think?’ she asked, twirling for him in the console room with a dazzling smile that made him blink. He hadn’t been able to answer, couldn’t find words to tell her how she lit up the darkness. They left the TARDIS with his arm around her waist, her body filling a Rose-shaped hole against his side that he hadn’t even realised was there. Walking through the high flowerbeds that flanked the country house they were approaching, he could hear the strains of music lilting through the air and his heart lifted, just with the sound of it. They went into the house, thronged with gaily dressed revellers and the first group of people who welcomed them asked for an introduction.  
  
He smiled brightly. ‘I’m the Doctor, and this is Rose, my…’ One very small word. Two letters. A thousand unanswered questions. Even with nine hundred years of experience, sometimes he had less sense than the smallest amoeba writhing around in the primordial slime. A ring of expectant faces surrounded him, but that was nothing to the one, far more important expression that looked up at him from his side. His mind raced, too late to beat his mouth into second place, but struggling to find a word for what she meant to him. They were sleeping together, but sex was only the beginning. There was so much else he wanted to do with her, so much else that he wanted them to be, apart from just lovers. He still hadn’t found the courage to tell her how he felt.  
  
But complicated was his middle name. Probably. ‘Companion,’ he settled for finally, falling back on an old favourite.  
  
She was ice against him, her body chilling. She turned stiffly on her heel and strode back through the open doors, away into the evening.   
  
She was still crying when he caught up with her, and her tears held him silent for a while. He would do anything to make her smile. Anything except tell her the truth. ’Where’re you going? he asked finally, knowing the answer.  
  
‘Home’ she confirmed. She didn’t mean the TARDIS either.  
  
‘I’m sorry,’ he tried.  
  
She stopped. ‘Sorry for the last nine days? Sorry because you’re ashamed of me? Sorry because you’re actually going to have to talk to me about this whatever-it-is we’re having? What sort of sorry are you?’  
  
He tried again. ‘I’m not sorry then. And I’m not ashamed of you. I don’t want you to go.’  
  
She looked at him. ‘Companion,’ she said, and started back up the path.   
  
He knew he was losing her. It might even be the right thing to do. He was too old, too dangerous, too long lived, too much of too many things that made him entirely wrong for her. Sadly, she was entirely right for him. He had known it for months, but he had only acted one hundred and ninety one hours, thirty three minutes and twelve seconds ago. As she walked away, he knew it wasn’t enough. Ignoring his conscience, his instinct for self sacrifice and the monstrous inability of Time Lords to seize the day, he listened to his heart, and raced after her. She was as light as a feather as he swung her into his arms, carried her through the door, back into the house and right into the middle of the dancefloor. There was only one way to show her that he wasn’t ashamed of her, or sorry for anything.   
  
He let go of her only when he was sure that they had the undivided attention of the assembled masses. The dancers stopped turning, the music ground to a halt. And then, he kissed her. He didn’t stop kissing her until she relaxed against him at last and kissed him back.   
  
‘Companion?’ she asked, pulling away, one eyebrow raised.  
  
‘Mine,’ he answered.   
  
And just so everyone in the room, including her, would know it, he started taking off her dress. He was so far from feeling any shame that he would have had her right there on the floor if they hadn’t been asked to leave. As it was, the dress only made it as far as the flowerbeds outside, ripped from hem to bodice in his haste to get it off. He picked her up and set her on one of the waist high walls just outside the door, pushed her back so she was lying flat on a carpet of flowers. He spread her legs, and, still standing, bent low, licking her from the cleft between her thighs, all the way up her body, over her breasts to her mouth, and back down again, until she was slick with the wet trails of his tongue and her own moist readiness. Standing, and taking hold of her hips, he loosened his trousers, completely oblivious to the horrified stares of the occasional guest hurrying past, and set about making her his in the only way he knew how. She crossed her legs around his waist, but he had to put one hand on her stomach to keep her flat, wanting to see her face twist in pleasure, smile when she came. It didn’t take long.   
  
And then he put his coat around her and carried her back to their home, and back to their bed, just to lie still together for a while.  
  
She shifted more closely against his chest. He wouldn’t be her Doctor without a bit of angst. Although he had said ‘Mine’, she was thinking the same thing. 


	10. Chapter 10

On the tenth of December, they saved the world, because they hadn’t done it in a week and a half and he didn’t want to get out of practice. It wasn’t a very big world, not up to his usual standards. Rose said she’d been bigger worlds given away free with magazines and he’d had to explain to her very carefully, that sometimes, size really didn’t matter. She agreed, and he felt like spanking her. Every time she opened her mouth that morning he’d felt like spanking her, as well as every time she hadn’t. He’d spent most of the day on hands and knees, crawling down tunnels too tiny to stand up straight in, watching Rose’s denim clad bottom wave around in right in front of his eyes.   
  
The TARDIS was parked in the only cavern in this underground world big enough to accommodate it, and they’d gone off in search of the rock eating insects that were devouring the planet from the inside out. Because he said he was a gentleman, he insisted she precede him into the stony corridors, and because what he said wasn’t necessarily true he’d spent the whole morning lusting after her shamelessly. There was a lot of shameless going around.   
  
‘So basically,’ she said, halfway into a space so narrow she had to wriggle her hips to get through. ‘We’re going to find the nest, and put down some bait, and then they’ll all die off?’  
  
‘Sort of, yeah,’ he replied absently, watching her backside make suggestive movements in the light of the sonic screwdriver.   
  
‘Then this doesn’t count as saving the world, does it? This is more like pest control.’  
  
‘Sort of, yeah,’ he said, trotting out his stock answer to anything he couldn’t be bothered to think about.  
  
She sniggered. ‘So — if this is pest control — does that make you the exterminator?’  
  
He wasn’t even remotely amused. He stopped. ‘Did you just make a joke about the destruction of my entire race? A disaster I caused, so terrible it left me drifting through time and space, emotionally crippled, until I met some Cockney schoolgirl and totally lost my mind.’  
  
‘Sort of, yeah,’ she shot back, giggling. ‘I bet that makes me a very naughty girl doesn’t it?’  
  
His mouth went dry. When they went back to the TARDIS to pick up some more bait she disappeared before he had a chance to think up a suitable punishment, locking the bedroom door behind her. He waited outside the ship, tapping his foot in impatience. The tenth of December was turning into a thoroughly frustrating day. Ten was clearly his unlucky number.  
  
When she appeared at the door he changed his mind. She was wearing knee high black leather boots, fishnet tights and a pleated grey skirt so short it would have been banned instantly at the Prydonian Academy. A white shirt several sizes too small completed the ensemble, with a red and black striped tie slung carelessly around her neck. He hated ties.   
  
Her hair was in pigtails and he thumbed her cheek suspiciously. ‘Are those meant to be freckles?’ he asked.  
  
‘Eyeliner,’ she replied triumphantly, withdrawing a wooden ruler from behind her back. ‘Up the apples and pears?’ she offered.   
  
‘I thought I told you size doesn’t matter?’ he noted, nodding her back towards the tunnels.   
  
‘Oh no,’ she answered. ‘You always make me go first. It’s your turn.’  
  
‘That’s why I’m a gentleman,’ he retorted. ‘But you groped me enough last week so in you go, and I’ll come after you.’   
  
‘Not if I can help it,’ she muttered to herself, and went back down on hands and knees.   
  
He quickly learned he had been wrong about the tights. What she actually had on were stockings, and a suspender belt, and a black thong with tiny red flowers sewn on it. In red stitching. And he knew that because he had such a close up view of it.   
  
At the second intersection he gave her directions. ‘Turn left,’ he said. She went right.  
  
Something on the floor grated against his hand. He looked down. It was the ruler. He looked up. Rose’s bottom smiled at him insolently. He picked up the ruler and made her smile that little bit pinker. She squealed. But at the next junction she went wrong again and needed correcting. He was happy to oblige. By the time the world was thoroughly saved she had made enough errors to earn herself detention.   
  
Crawling out of the tunnels she made no attempt to stand up, so he yanked off the thong, kneeled up, and prepared to teach her a lesson she wouldn’t forget. Unfortunately, she’d been paying far more attention in class than he had.   
  
She waited until he penetrated her, and then, before he could get comfortable, she took a deep breath and squeezed her muscles around him, gripping him in a hot, wet embrace so tight it made him gasp. He tugged himself back out a bit against the pressure, all his hidden nerve endings posting him little messages about friction, and rubbing. He pushed back in again, felt his legs go weak at the resistance, the stranglehold of her warmth around him. This was the woman whose pelvic floor could wake him up all on its own, after all. He sent a silent prayer of thanks to anything that might be listening for the wonderful sport of gymnastics.   
  
So he surrendered, and he rode her as hard as she would let him, his hands on her hips, his arms around her waist, his nails on her back. He threw himself into her until the sweat was trickling down his face, pumping as fast as he could, banging and slapping against her as finally, with a shout that could be heard on the other side of the world, he shot into her and collapsed.   
  
She rolled from underneath him, snatched up the ruler from the floor and kneeled up, looking down at his firm, white, naked, vulnerable, and entirely unprotected behind. She shook her head. ‘I don’t mind it not being ladies first,’ she said. ‘As long as it’s ladies second. Someone should teach you better manners.’ She raised her arm. 


	11. Chapter 11

‘You wouldn’t really?’ asked Rose, in the early hours of the morning of December the 11th.   
  
‘Try me,’ he challenged, putting his hands behind his head.   
  
They were lying in bed, resting in between bouts of ferocious lovemaking, and she had taken the rare opportunity of finding her mouth not otherwise engaged to try to have a conversation.   
  
‘Anything though? Anything at all?’  
  
‘I’d do anything once,’ he replied. ‘Comes with the territory. Like I said — you’ve got to jump in, use the wrong verb. No point in travelling if you won’t try anything new.’  
  
‘I’ll hold you to that then,’ she said, just before he reached out and started to show her again just how many things he had already tried.   
  
Ten minutes before midnight on December 12th she found a way to test him out. They were standing in the middle of a tight press of men, in the middle of the dance floor, in the middle of G.A.Y., a thriving one night a week venue in the heart of glamorous London’s West End. She had been there once with Shireen when both of them were on a break from their then boyfriends and looking for a laugh. It was a great place to come if you were a straight girl. Possibly not so great if you were a straight Time Lord though, she thought, reviewing the expression on his face.  
  
‘You said you’d try anything once,’ she shrugged. ‘Just find somebody you like and ask him back to the TARDIS. No big deal. Oh — but I want to watch.’  
  
He glowered at her. ‘And what gives you the impression that I’d enjoy that?’ he asked.  
  
‘Well,’ she said looking him up and down. ‘Let’s see — skin tight black jeans, nearly shaved off hair, obsession with leather jackets, obvious control freak. You fit right in.’  
  
She was still laughing when his back disappeared up the long flights of stairs on his way out of the club. Clearly, there were some things that he wouldn’t even try once. 


	12. Chapter 12

12.06am. 12 December. A street so disreputable, so shady looking, it had been disowned by the rest of London’s glamorous West End and left to fend for itself. A shop with blacked out windows. A door that gave a muffled moan as the Doctor entered.  
  
12.07am. 12 December. The door swung shut on a very bad idea. Daleks and Cybermen and whatever else didn’t scare him, but he would run a mile from the sight of a man in an all in one black shiny PVC catsuit, who had to unzip his mouth before he could say good evening.   
  
The Doctor decided to behave like any other sensible person in the twenty first century, and order what he needed online instead. With a bit of the time travel jiggery-pokery that made Christmas shopping a breeze he was standing outside the TARDIS ten minutes later when the delivery van arrived. Only when he started opening boxes did he realise how soul destroying the sentence ‘batteries not included’ could be. He’d told Rose he would try anything, but what he really meant was, he’d try anything on her. And she was about to find that out.  
  
She was still locked in the bedroom where he’d left her, awaiting punishment with a nervous anticipation that manifested itself in a fit of the giggles when he entered the room. She was ruining the mood, particularly when the mood he was going for was sleazy. He’d never done sleazy before, but he was fairly sure it shouldn’t involve quite so much laughing. He put the brown paper bag he was carrying down on the bedside table with a thump. Deliberately, he withdrew a short, straight, black leather riding crop from it and swished it in the air a couple of times significantly. Her eyes were wide, and she wasn’t laughing.   
  
‘Strip,’ he commanded.   
  
She complied with shaking fingers. When she was lying on the bed, totally at his mercy, he handed her a blindfold, and told her to put it on, no trace on his face whatsoever of the smile that was desperately trying to batter its way out of his skull.   
  
But she looked tiny and vulnerable against the covers, and for an instant all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and hold her tightly. He was ruining the mood himself. He brought the whip down on the bed with a crack, a reminder of what he was doing, and then — because he had only bought it for comedy effect — he put it away.   
  
Removing the leather cuffs and the specially extended straps that even Google had had trouble finding he put his enormous four poster bed to the single purpose he kept it for. He had plenty of other beds for sleeping, but only this one gave him enough scope to tie Rose down securely, while still giving her enough freedom to make the movements he wanted her to. She waited expectantly, spread-eagled and lashed to the corner posts, and she smiled. He found the smiling suspicious. He was expecting excitement, protests, begging, if he was lucky, and really, really hot sex, but calm smiling just wasn’t in the sleazy game plan.   
  
‘Don’t you even want to know what I’m going to do to you?’ he questioned, giving up at last.   
  
Her smile grew. ‘No. I don’t care,’ she replied. ‘I trust you. You won’t hurt me. Do anything you like.’   
  
That was just annoying. She had totally ruined the mood. It would be impossible to pull off a convincing sleazy if she was just going to be all reasonable about it. Hot sex, he reminded himself. Go for the hot sex. Or cold sex, in this case, because the first thing he did was remove an icecube from a tray in the bag and run it over one of her nipples. The tight little point came up immediately and she shivered. That was more like it.   
  
By the time he had trailed the first chill wet shard over her stomach she was trying to close her legs together against the press of the leather straps. It took another icecube, melting in the heat between her thighs, to really get her excited. He had never seen the tiny pink ridge that he loved to touch stand up so proudly as when he teased it with a drop of frozen water. He couldn’t resist working her from side to side a couple of times with his tongue, just to see if she tasted any different when she was cold. She didn’t, but she certainly shouted louder.   
  
Then he went in with the chocolate body paint. She didn’t seem to mind too much when he covered her breasts in sticky goo and had to spend a good ten minutes sucking her clean. In fact, her hips were thrusting upwards at regular intervals, making her restraints creak by the time he had finished. But she only started protesting when he spread her apart as far as she could go and coated her shining insides with delicate swipes of his brush. Then he spent an extremely pleasurable half an hour licking it off, his hands underneath her bottom, holding her in place, his face buried firmly between her thighs. She whimpered ‘No, no,’ whenever he came up to take a breather and thrashed her head against the pillows.   
  
When he removed his favourite purchase from the bag she was panting heavily, her face was flushed, and she was so desperate to come that she was pulling hard against the straps and gritting out ‘please’ between her teeth every time she sensed him standing closer. He stripped off his clothes, lay down again in the open V of her legs and turned on the vibrator. He was quite embarrassed that he had even bought such a thing, even more so, because it was bright pink, had a picture of a lollipop on the end and went by the name of Mr Funboy. He was intending to lose it tomorrow accidentally on purpose. He couldn’t see why Rose would need it anyway, as long as he was around.  
  
She heard the unfamiliar buzzing noise, and she stiffened as he circled the plastic head around her throbbing opening and gently dipped it inside. He pushed it in further, and watched her body rise off the bed, pulled it out, and saw her fall, gasping, back down against the sheets. He drove it far enough in to nearly lose his fingers inside her, and he listened to her call his name, before he whipped it back out and she started begging again. The control was addictive. He wondered how long he could keep letting her run to the brink of orgasm before hauling her back.   
  
He fingers curled into claws. ‘Doctor,’ she choked out. ‘Doctor.’  
  
And he realised that she was telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. She was calling for him, she wanted him, and not some poor plastic imitation. He freed her legs from the straps, kneeled up on the bed, put her ankles up on his shoulders and replaced Mr Funboy with something a lot more grown up. He could feel the flex of her stomach muscles as she pushed up against him, and the position let him penetrate deep into her core. He grabbed her calves, rocking forward on his knees, ramming himself down as far into her as he could go. Her whole body gave a convulsive shudder at the speed and strength of his thrusts, and when he released inside her at last, she shouted out her ecstasy to the walls: ‘I love you.’  
  
He stopped abruptly, withdrew, let her down. That wasn’t just ruining the mood, that was ripping it up into tiny pieces and grinding them into the floor. He didn’t know what to say. Well, he did know what to say but he wasn’t sure he should say it. Telling her she was his was one thing, but ‘I love you’ was something else. ‘I love you’ was ‘stay with me’ and ‘take your chances’ and ‘no going back’. ‘I love you’ was selfish. ‘I love you’ was forever. He wasn’t sure he could honestly offer her forever, and if he couldn’t be honest, he wouldn’t be anything.   
  
He unstrapped her, held her until she fell asleep. He was awake for a long time.


	13. Chapter 13

December 13th.  
  
Her hands were splayed against the console, her hair dishevelled, hanging in lank, sweat stained strands on either side of her face. She was going to come. Her knickers were round her ankles, her skirt pushed up and out of the way, her legs spread. The Doctor behind her, buried inside her, stabbing at her with short, angry strokes, his hand curved round her waist, fingers pressed tightly between her legs, manipulating her into orgasm. She had never needed to tell him exactly how to touch her, that was one of the many things she loved about him. He was going to make her come, hard. And soon. She bit her lip, deciding she wasn’t going to cry out his name, tell him she loved him again, do any of the things she had done yesterday. Any of the things he had ignored.  
  
But she needed just a little bit more force, she wanted him to give it to her just that little bit more roughly. She thought for a moment. ‘Can we go to my mother’s for Christmas?’ she asked.   
  
That was much better. The movement of his hand and his now even angrier thrusts were too much to bear and she couldn’t fend off the sharpness of the climax that exploded within her, clamping her legs closer together to hold him within, shaking in controllable waves, a gasp wrung from her mouth. His determined panting grew deeper for a second, and she could feel him lose his orgasm inside her, with an indrawn breath that was still annoyingly restrained. He withdrew immediately, and she heard him fastening his trousers, marching loudly out of the room. She sighed, picked herself up, pulling up her underwear, rearranging her skirt. She fell back on the jumpseat, exhausted.   
  
She thought back. An hour earlier, they were sitting together over the breakfast table. The Doctor was silent. ‘Silent’ and ‘Doctor’ didn’t belong in the same sentence together so she found a random vein of conversation, and opened it.   
  
‘I like this tea,’ she said, sipping. Their combined love of tea was practically the foundation their relationship was built on. ‘What’s it called?’  
  
He reached over, took her cup, drank out of it and gave it back, pulling a face. ‘Tastes like Earl Grey or something,’ he replied, concentrating on his toast.  
  
‘Well, I like Earl Grey then,’ she answered, drinking a bit more. ‘It’s very smooth, very subtle.’   
  
He gave her a sharp look. ‘Wouldn’t have thought you would go for smooth. Or subtle for that matter. I’d have said you were a girl who liked her tea plain — just tea, and none of that fancy stuff.’  
  
She shrugged. ‘I like Earl Grey. It’s more refined. What’s that you’re drinking?’  
  
He took a gulp. ‘Doesn’t have a name. Doesn’t need one. It knows what it is — honest, no nonsense, straightforward tea. Tea you can rely on. I thought it was your favourite.’  
  
She met his level stare. ‘Most of the time, it is,’ she replied. ‘But sometimes, just occasionally, I like Earl Grey. Earl Grey does things for me that other teas don’t. Earl Grey’s full of surprises, the sort of tea that takes you out to dinner and buys you flowers when you’re not expecting it. You don’t get that with ordinary tea. It expects you to like it without putting in the effort.’  
  
He put his cup down with a clatter. ‘At least ordinary tea doesn’t make you any promises it can’t keep. Ordinary tea doesn’t ask you for anything in return, it just wants you to carry on drinking it.’  
  
She sighed, returned her own cup to the saucer. ‘But that’s why I like Earl Grey sometimes. Because it’s out of the ordinary. It doesn’t hold anything back. You don’t have to keep guessing what Earl Grey’s thinking. Earl Grey’s spontaneous — it tells you how it feels.’  
  
He pushed his chair back. ‘Then Earl Grey’s a mummy’s boy,’ he answered and strode out of the room.   
  
Half an hour later she found herself spread against the console, being shown in no uncertain terms how the Doctor felt, even if today, that was mostly angry. She knew he thought of her as his, and she knew he’d do anything to make her happy, but it wasn’t enough. She had told him she loved him and he hadn’t replied. He wouldn’t talk about it, got annoyed with her when she tried to force him into it. She’d just have to let him get there in his own time.  
  
She shouted after the noise of his retreating footsteps. ‘That wasn’t spontaneous. I heard you coming.’  
  
He didn’t dignify that with a response. 


	14. Chapter 14

On the fourteenth of December Rose Tyler brushed her teeth, took off her clothes and went to bed as usual. Inasmuch that any night spent in the same bed as a Time Lord could be considered usual. This particular one was sleeping soundly however, when she crept beneath the covers, exhausted from a day of mental activity that hadn’t really included her at all.   
  
In the morning, they landed on some inconspicuous planet and by lunchtime he’d achieved a neat bit of diplomacy that had eluded the inhabitants for several thousand years. That evening they were guests of honour at an enormous dinner party, sitting on the top table and being stared at by the multitudinous throng. During the starter he’d slipped his fingers under the table cloth, up her dress and between her thighs.  
  
He reached over, breaking a stem off the table arrangement and handing it to her as the main course was served. ‘So,’ he whispered urgently. ‘This is dinner, I’ve given you a flower, and how’s this for a surprise?’ And he proceeded to finger her leisurely under the table for the rest of the meal.   
  
She had a stimulating conversation with the man on her left about the digestive benefits of tofu, she was so enthusiastic about soya beans that she couldn’t sit still and by dessert she was positively ecstatic on the subject of nut roast. Only a short period spent choking into her port, while the Doctor rubbed her back saved her from complete disgrace. So when she went to bed on the fourteenth of December she hadn’t slept with the Doctor all day.  
  
But she dreamed in glorious technicolour, and in very bad language. She was naked — again — and in the console room — again — and sitting firmly on the Doctor’s cock as he leant back in the jumpseat. It was one of her most favourite places to be. All but the most important part of him was completely relaxed as he watched her, breasts bouncing up and down, riding him with one leg crouched on either side of his hips, his feet tapping against the floor. She was having one of those sessions where she just couldn’t get enough. He was thick and straight within her, by far the biggest thing she’d ever had between her legs, but some days, even that didn’t hit the spot.   
  
‘Harder,’ she ordered. ‘Fuck me harder.’  
  
He loved it when she talked dirty, or at least, she dreamed that he did. He sat up a bit straighter, put his hands on her hips and forced her down on top of him. She was already so turned on she was dripping but she could feel a tremendous orgasm hanging around and she was determined not to let it get away. The feel of his hands squeezing her breasts was amazing, and she looked down to see familiar fingers tugging at her nipples, and then, she noticed, a second pair of exactly the same hands still locked onto her hips.   
  
Abruptly, she felt lips on her neck from behind, and heard that deep, husky voice he put on when he was about to seduce her. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Now let me show you how to do it properly.’  
  
Questions flooded her mind, half dazed with too much sex. ‘What?’ she managed. ‘Two?’  
  
The Doctor behind her shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m from an alternative universe. Maybe this is some horrible accident in time. This is your dream, make up your own plot device.’  
  
His hands slid down to cup her bottom, pushing her forward slightly, spreading her apart. She felt a coldness on her back, a liquid wetness rubbed into her skin, into a place that he hadn’t touched before, and then, as the pace of the thrusting between her thighs quickened, a finger entered her from behind. It was a totally new experience, tight and rough and it made her feel utterly wanton, capable of anything.   
  
The climax kicking around in her brain got louder and she gasped out what she wanted, her voice raw and broken. ‘Again. Harder.’  
  
She felt hands on her back, tilting her forward against the weight on her hips and something altogether larger prodded at her other entrance. She stopped moving immediately, rising up off the erection jabbing into her from below, braced for pain. There wasn’t any, but a brief, hot discomfort, an insistent, throbbing pressure ramming into her and not stopping, not slowing, until she was spread further than she thought she could go. She braced her legs against the chair, as wide as possible as she was filled by him, tighter and tighter, stretching her, demanding that she take every last part of him in. Then two sets of hands, one on her shoulders, one on her hips settled her gently back down onto the second swollen heat below. She felt it slide inside her, forcing her open and her body tried to protest, tried to contract against the pressure of a double penetration. And then his fingers, circling down over her stomach, rubbing at her forcefully, relaxing and calming her, reassuring her that pleasure was holding its breath and waiting for her to find it again. Together, they started to move.   
  
She held both of them inside, as one withdrew, the other pushed in, one pulled out, the other thrust forward, a delicate alternating pattern that got faster and faster. A warm mouth sucked at the skin of her neck, there were hands on her breasts, strong and sure, other fingers rubbing and stroking between her legs. She was completely overwhelmed by the cascade of sensations flooding through her, an orchestra of pleasure drowning everything out and building to a crescendo. She could only feel the movements within, every nerve tuned to the in-and-out friction, the relentless drives banging into her, the pleasure so intense it hurt.  
  
‘Harder,’ she begged. ‘Harder.’  
  
Every touch, every plunge, every kiss was only to make her happy. The hard grind of two men inside her told her how powerful, how in control she was. She was the focus of all their attention and she felt wanted, desired, as she had never been. Three bodies, stretching out as one towards orgasm, her orgasm. When she came at last, her muscles shook so hard that she couldn’t control herself, her head flung backwards, nails tearing at the palms of her hands. And although he’d told her that in space no one could hear her scream, she had a very good try at deafening anyone within earshot. She even woke herself up.


	15. Chapter 15

Early in the morning of December 15th Rose Tyler sat up with a start, the aftermath of her dream washing around in her head. Her fantasies weren’t usually quite so explicit, and they didn’t usually have such a physical effect on her either. She found that the thin material of the chaste pyjamas she had put on before going to bed was soaking, and there was a painful aching throb inside that wouldn’t go away. She was slimy with sweat and she had twisted the covers beside her hands into knots. She rolled onto her side, trying hard to control her breathing, praying that the Doctor wouldn’t hear how fast she was panting and ask her just why she couldn’t keep her legs together. There was no chance of going back to sleep, much as she might want to pick up the threads of her dream.   
  
He was snoring beside her, but she decided not to bother waking him up, resenting the time it would take to get him up to speed, and dreading the inevitable laughter when she had to explain why she wanted him so badly. She could take care of herself.  
  
She slipped her hand down between her thighs, following the well known path that the Doctor had traced out time and time again over the last few weeks. It was actually a shock to feel a set of warm fingers down below, since he was usually colder, and often, slightly less delicate. Touching herself rapidly, and skilfully, she arched her hips up off the bed to get a better angle, holding her breath as the warmth built up and regular hammering shudders forced all her attention down to the sharp rub-rub of her hand.  
  
She closed her eyes, bit down on her lip, tried hard not to move too violently, but a little moan escaped her anyway when she shook herself into orgasm. Falling back, the tension drained out of her and she heard him clear his throat, no longer even pretending to be asleep. She had clearly made enough noise to wake him up. She cursed the size of his ears.  
  
‘Very nice,’ he said, taking her hand, putting her fingers into his mouth and sucking them clean. ‘Now let me show you how to do it properly.’   
  
She cursed the size of his ego. He wasn’t a gentleman, when it came to sex he had absolutely no morals whatsoever, and he would try anything on her once, even invading a perfectly good dream to try out a telepathic threesome. One Doctor was annoying enough, but two were more than any woman could be expected to take for more than a few minutes at a time. But he clearly thought that two of him was every young girl’s fantasy. She swore to herself that somehow, she would bring him back down to size. 


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I can't post this on the right day, apologies.

On December 16th, the Doctor lost his inhibitions. And his coat, which worried him a lot more. The TARDIS had crash-landed — not an enormous surprise since its hit rate for successful journeys was only about twelve in every thirteen. It seemed almost impossible to take a trip through the vortex these days without meeting up with yourself on the way back. The TARDIS just hadn’t been the same since Rose had smashed it open with that tow truck and gone joy riding.  
  
But when she opened the door and saw they were on a deserted beach, she let out a scream of delight that he had only heard in her wildest dreams.   
  
‘Look,’ she cried, clapping her hands together. ‘It’s Christmas already.’   
  
And she raced down towards the sea, stripping off her clothes with heedless unconcern and dumping them on the sand. He shook his head, wondering why the use of coathangers and the concept of folding were such a mystery to her. She waved at him from the water, her naked breasts lifted by the rolling tide.  
  
‘Come in,’ she called. ‘It’s paradise.’  
  
He looked down at his clothes. He looked back at her. There was no way he was going skinny dipping. No Time Lord had ever been skinny dipping in all the long history of Gallifrey. Rassilon had been very stern on the subject. But he didn’t remember anything specifically forbidding underwear though. Sitting down, he took off his boots, rolled up his socks, and, to a series of bad wolf whistles from the sea, peeled off his jumper.  
  
Rose trod water and watched him strip. It was difficult to do both things at once. Partly because she was laughing so hard she kept gulping in mouthfuls of seawater instead of air and partly because from her vantage point she could see the very big sign that the TARDIS had parked half in front of —a sign that the Doctor hadn’t yet turned round to see. ‘Welcome to Paradise’ it read — ‘Marbella’s biggest nudist beach’.  
  
He was standing with his top off, fiddling uncomfortably with his belt buckle, looking down at the sand squeezed between his toes. She paused to admire the corded muscle in his shoulders, the stomach so flat she could have eaten her dinner off it — and had, on a couple of occasions when he’d got a bit carried away. He was doing the most disappointing striptease she had ever seen, and possibly, the most disappointing striptease the people watching him from the car park behind the beach had ever seen too.   
  
‘Promise I won’t look,’ she called, putting her hands dramatically over her eyes.  
  
There was a splash as he entered the sea, and then his arms were round her from behind, his body pressed to hers as she sat back in the water. Confused, she groped behind, feeling some very wet, very tight fitting material and not a lot else.  
  
‘I’m cold,’ he explained apologetically.  
  
He didn’t stay cold for long. She dived under the water to remove his last remaining hiding place, letting the tide carry the black pants, with their gold figure of eight monogram, away. Then she set to work on warming him up, rubbing vigorously until he was back to his usual self.   
  
His fingers opened her up to the shock of the cold water, bring a lubricious chill to her innermost flesh when he found the right spot. The sea was ice cold, and his hands weren’t much warmer, turning his every caress into something hard and fierce, tiny hammerblows of pleasure between her legs. He pushed into her with his arms still around her waist from behind, so that she was sitting on top of him facing away, with both of them looking out to sea. He was freezing inside her, a column of fire and ice, burning heat when he pushed in and out but revealing a chilly core every time he was still. Because he was treading water his thrusts were unusually random, periodically trailing off until his foot touched the bottom again and he surged suddenly up into her, and made her whole body spasm. Her orgasm was sharp and unexpected, jumping out at her when she wasn’t looking and hiding away again a couple of minutes later. It was so cold she had to spend far more effort than usual making sure he came too, eventually changing position and angling forward to lock her legs around his back.   
  
As soon as he had finished, she swam away to the beach as fast as she could. ‘Back in a minute,’ she shouted, leaving him still recovering.   
  
He watched her walk up the sand, picking up their discarded clothing with approval. Clearly all those over exaggerated sighs and disapproving sniffs as he stepped over enormous piles of dumped t-shirts in their bedroom were having the desired effect. It was only when he noticed the sign peeping out from behind the TARDIS that he started to work out the odds of actually crash-landing on a beach in Marbella in 1989. He had the sneaking suspicion that he was being ganged up on. He watched the door slam shut on Rose’s naked backside like the crack of doom.  
  
For the first ten minutes, he decided to stay in the sea and just wait for her to come back, preferably bringing all his clothes — or at the very least his coat, with her. For the twenty minutes after that, he decided to stay in the sea and wait for the nice couple who had arrived from the car park to finish their picnic and leave. For the following sixty minutes he decided the stay in the sea while the friends of the nice couple, and their friends, and all their friends, and anyone they’d ever met in their whole lives ever stopped setting up their towels and their umbrellas and generally covering the entire expanse of sand in naked flesh. Fifteen minutes after that, the beach was so full that he decided he had to ignore the person erecting a stripy sunshade off the side of the TARDIS and pretend not to care that they were chipping his paintwork. Another fifteen minutes was spent hiding underwater from the very large man, with the very large smile who kept tipping him very large winks and swimming much too close. He decided after two hours, that it was time to leave the sea. Having prove-a-point sex with Rose in public didn’t bother him, because he had been so scared of losing her he couldn’t string a sentence together, let alone care what anyone else thought. But walking back up the beach in the middle of the daytime on his own, totally naked, was another matter entirely. He was rarely without his coat, let alone his dignity.  
  
But, he had never actually died of embarrassment before, and, he thought, even if it happened now, he could just regenerate into someone that nobody on the beach would ever recognise again. Determinedly, he walked out of the water, and because he’d been in there for two hours, and because he was still very, very cold, no one paid him the slightest bit of attention or even gave him a second glance. He couldn’t help feeling just a shade disappointed.   
  
He knocked on the TARDIS door and Rose answered, wearing nothing but his missing leather coat and a very wide smile. He felt a bit warmer.   
  
She looked him up and down. ‘Bedroom?’  
  
‘You read my mind,’ he replied, barging past her on his way down the corridor.  
  
‘Annoying isn’t it?’ she answered, her hands on the buttons of his coat. 


	17. Chapter 17

When the days of December hit on seventeen,  
They went to a place that she never had been,  
The TARDIS had stopped at a place and a time,  
Where the people who lived there spoke only in rhyme.  
Stepping out of the door, she tripped and then cursed,  
Was amazed to hear herself swearing in verse.  
‘This is great. I can’t wait,’ he said, patting his ship,  
And he dragged her off, swearing, with an arm round her hip,  
They walked to a town which was jam-packed with people,  
And a market, a town hall, a church with a steeple,  
Some half timbered houses, just post mediaeval,  
But wide open drains where the smell was quite evil,  
‘Stop moaning, and kiss me, my fine fettled wench,  
And mind you don’t slip, you’re quite close to that trench,’  
Quoth he, with a grin that she wiped off his face:  
‘I’m not coming near you till we’re out of this place.’  
‘Alright them, we’ve come here to broaden your mind,  
Let’s go have a look and see what we find.’  
They decided on Shakespeare, or some other great play,  
But too early for evening, they’d missed matinee.  
He suggested a walk and set off for the beach,  
But she kept him at arms length and quite out of reach.  
He whispered sweet nothings as they walked on the sand,  
And slowly she smiled and she gave him her hand,  
He made a suggestion, and she shook her head,  
He changed it, just slightly, she nodded instead.  
So down on the sand, with the sound of the surf,  
They tried the position known as soixante-neuf.  
She got on top, and he was beneath,  
And she sucked at his cock with her lips and her teeth,  
He raised his hand slowly, spread open her slit,  
Explored with his tongue till he hit on her clit,  
He licked it, he nipped it, he made her quite sore,  
So she stroked him, she teased him, till he begged for more,  
His fingers within her, her back arched, she cried,  
And all that she wanted was to feel him inside.  
Her mouth was around him, all hot, strong and tight,  
But he tried to hold on for as long as he might,  
She rocked and she bucked at his now-faster pace,  
And really, quite quickly, came over his face.  
He didn’t have leisure to joke or to gloat,  
Because quick as a shot, he came down her throat.  
Both sated, exhausted, they slept side by side  
Until they awoke with the touch of the tide.  
Dressed now, and rowing about who came the hardest,  
They held hands and walked their way back to the TARDIS.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Car Crash Bride and The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer are available now on Amazon.


	18. Chapter 18

‘Not exactly like this, no,’ said the Doctor, entering Rose for about the hundredth time on December 18th.   
  
She looked up at him, her hands behind her head, flat on her back, her body at right angles and her legs locked comfortably over his waist and his thighs, holding him in. ‘Like what then?’ she asked.  
  
He gave her a quizzical expression, propped up on his side, and slid his way out of her again, thoughtfully. ‘Less messy, for one thing,’ he noted, removing his hand from the hot gap between her legs and licking his fingers appreciatively.   
  
She curled her chest and shoulders forward, deftly caught his straying digits and put them back where they belonged.   
  
‘And less noisy,’ he continued, penetrating her again and filling the bedroom with the moist little noises she made as he worked away at the slick flesh inside her.  
  
She shivered, raised her back off the bed, fitting her pelvis more tightly against the teasing fast flick of his fingers and the taut sliding within. ‘So what was it like then?’ she asked, once his pace had subsided to an easy rub that left her warm and relaxed.  
  
He rested his head against his hand, pulling out, and delving in again, a bit more deeply. He adopted his standard ‘rational explanation’ tone, idly tracing circles round and round with his fingertip glued to her, enjoying the alternate tightening and loosening of her muscles around him.  
  
‘There’s been a lot of speculation,’ he started. ‘Like — Time Lords can only have sex if there’s some dodgy chemical involved. Do I look like the sort of man who needs to drug a woman to get her into bed? Actually… don’t answer that. And there’s some serious interest in our equipment.’  
  
He spent a couple of minutes showing her how seriously interesting his equipment could be all on its own. When she had stopped gasping and was lying back down again, he continued: ‘But the ‘how’ never mattered to me. It’s why you’re doing it that counts.’   
  
He felt her tensing around him again and wondered if she was building up to a question he wouldn’t want to answer, so he rushed on. ‘If you really want to, I can have a try. No promises mind.’   
  
She nodded, and he disengaged, earning himself a hefty pout of disappointment that only lifted when he deliberately inserted his fingers into her mouth and made her lick her own taste off his hand. Then his shining clean fingers crept to her temples and her mind exploded.  
  
Later, she realised that ‘exploded’ was nowhere near the right word. It was like all her thoughts had been taken apart and rearranged in a different order, a jigsaw puzzle put together by a very small child, not quite slotting back into the right holes. She could feel him inside her head, an intrusion more intimate than the simple biological match of his body with hers. There was a sudden rush of images she recognised, like a potted history of all the pleasure she had ever known, and then a stabbing, lancing ecstasy shooting straight through her mind, bypassing crude physical reactions and transporting her directly to the place she only saw when she was on the verge of coming. He held her there; she could feel him doing it, exploring her in the darkness behind her eyes with the whispering caress of his mind. She lost contact with her senses, knowing only the absolute warmth and acceptance pouring out of him, the devouring strength of his need to make her happy.  
  
In seconds, with a white noise that blanked off every other feeling, a cascade of raw joy swept her away, rising up from every side at once; a thousand times stronger than the moments she had spent writhing under his tongue, sharper than the heat of him pounding within her. And the instant it arrived, it was gone, along with his presence, and she found herself lying on the bed, drenched in sweat, with her muscles twitching and the Doctor above, watching her with anxious eyes.  
  
‘If I asked, how was it for you, would you laugh?’ he said.  
  
She pinned a glittering smile to her face. ‘Lovely,’ she replied, but she sounded hollow to herself.  
  
She needed time to think. She pushed him flat on his back against the sheets and clambered on top, deliberately facing away into the dark so he couldn’t meet her gaze. As she opened herself up and welcomed him in, she could hear him groan in response behind her, and she had space to consider the lingering taste he had left in her mind. The impression of him was still stamped across her brain, and behind the boundless willpower, the confidence, and the obvious desire, there hid a ravaged soul. But it was only a trace, a hint of locked down pain, the suspicion of walled up secrets he wouldn’t share.   
  
She quickened the speed of her hips, jolting against him, her hands resting on his knees, listening to the occasional cries he made absently. She was glad he couldn’t see her face.   
  
The brief passage of his thoughts in her head had taught her more than he knew. She could sense he was giving her everything, throwing every spark of happiness, and need, and hope he possessed her way, but taking nothing in return. She understood why he wouldn’t tell her how he felt. To do that, he would have to let her in. He’d have to let her love him. He’d have to love himself. ‘I love you’ was selfish. ‘I love you’ was forever. He thought that only forever was good enough.   
  
She heard him start that long indrawn breath he always did before his orgasm took him, and she held him as hard as she could, trying to comfort him in the only way she knew. He surged up into her as he came, crying out her name, and she heard it as a call for help. 


	19. Chapter 19

On the 19th of December, the Doctor took her up the aisle. And not the kind of aisle he had been thinking about on the 1st of December either. This was strictly the nudge-nudge wink-wink variety. After her dream, she wanted to try it out.   
  
She said it was the one adventure she had never had.  
  
Afterwards, they agreed it was the one adventure they would never bother with again. Unless there was significantly more alcohol. Or significantly more lubricant. 


	20. Chapter 20

On the twentieth of December the Doctor was defeated in mortal combat by his most dangerous foe. More wrinkled than Davros, more scheming than the Master, and with a grating voice that any Dalek would be proud of, Jackie Tyler called, and poor, sweet innocent Rose answered the phone. They were in the middle of the library, and Rose had insisted on hanging stockings on either side of the fireplace, even though he had pointed out repeatedly that if there was actually a way into the TARDIS through the chimney they’d both have been sucked out into space long ago. One of the stockings already had something inside it, and since he was leaving his shopping until Christmas Eve, it must be for him.   
  
It was quiet when the phone rang, and quiet after it was answered, because Rose spent the next ten minutes listening — butting in with a yes or a no every so often. It was a call to arms. It was a declaration of war. He knew exactly why Jackie was on the phone to her much missed and much absent daughter less than a week before Christmas. Like any good military commander, he had anticipated her tactics, and had a strategy of his own. He was going to fight dirty.  
  
So he walked over behind Rose, pushed her hair out of the way, and exposed her free ear, before he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her tenderly back against his chest, and began nuzzling her neck. In her other ear, the relentless onslaught continued.   
  
Rose rolled her eyes, put her hands over the speaker. ‘She wants to know if we’re coming for Christmas.’  
  
He blew into her ear, felt her shiver in response, tugged on her earlobe with his teeth.   
  
Eventually, Rose got a word in edgeways. ‘No mum,’ she said. ‘We’re really busy. People to save, things to do, you know.’   
  
He rewarded her, sucking at the delicate tracery of nerves where her neck met her shoulder, nipping at her skin as she relaxed against him. He was definitely winning.   
  
‘Yes, I did say ‘we’,’ Rose answered as he walked his fingers up the front of her top, and curved his hand around her breast. ‘Hmm?’ she replied to something distractedly, pushing forward to make sure he had a better grip. ‘Are we? What? Am I? With him?’  
  
She froze, her face flushing bright red and one hand came up to her mouth in horror. She stared at him. Jackie had struck a decisive blow.   
  
‘What do I tell her?’ Rose whispered, pushing away from him and spinning round so she could face him properly.   
  
He shook his head vigorously, made cutting motions with his hands. The very last thing he wanted Jackie Tyler to know, was that he had shagging her daughter every way he could think of for the last nineteen days, and he wasn’t about to stop now.   
  
Rose’s face went white. She held out the phone. ‘She wants to speak to you,’ she said.  
  
He took a step backwards as if he had been slapped. Again. He looked at Rose, the pleading appeal in her eyes tearing at his heartstrings, and he looked at the phone, knowing it for the knock out punch it was. He took it from her gingerly, holding it far enough away from his ear to avoid permanent injury. ‘Hello?’ he tried.  
  
‘If you don’t bring my daughter back for Christmas I’ll make sure you never lay another finger on her again, for as long as you live.’  
  
That was below the belt. She hit him where it hurt. She was also factually inaccurate because Rose always needed more than one finger, but he wasn’t going to put her straight. Jackie couldn’t really prevent him from seeing Rose, all she could do was cause a scene, make his life difficult and upset her daughter. He didn’t want Rose upset. Jackie knew it. She had outsmarted him, and that was saying something. Besides, Rose wanted to go home for Christmas, he could read it in the anxious expression in her eyes, but she was leaving the decision to him. He fell on his sword. Nodded, handed the phone back.  
  
‘He says yes,’ she crowed and for the next twenty minutes he was forced to listen to her chatter on about presents, and shopping, mince pies and who knew what else. The thought that he’d have to spend at least a whole day in Jackie Tyler’s company while she watched him like a hawk left him depressed. The thought that he might be expected to buy her a present made him suicidal. Rose could tell what a sacrifice he’d made by the beaten sag of his shoulders as soon as she put the phone down.   
  
Stripping off her trousers, she bent forwards over the sofa, upside down with her arms and her head resting in a half headstand position. With her bottom in the air, she offered him the spoils of victory. He took them, and he took her, splitting her legs apart even further and pushing down into her with his hands on the soft flesh of her behind. Gymnastics had a lot to answer for, he thought, launching himself inside her with resignation. He had to start slowly though, too fed up to muster more than the bare minimum of enthusiasm and it was only the tight heat of her wrapped around him, and the way her hands rocked her whole body back against his in more and more urgent actions that stopped him from giving up completely. She was trying so hard to please him that he felt duty bound to have her as fast as he could, working up a sweat with quick, half formed strokes, grinding in and out and digging his nails into her bottom. And although she gripped him fast, and although he came so hard and so strongly he could see trails of himself running back out of her when she straightened up, Jackie’s eyes were watching him the whole time.   
  
Christmas was an impatient mistress, and it was coming so fast that not even the skill of a Time Lord could slow it down. There weren’t many days left on the advent calendar.


	21. Chapter 21

The evening of 21st December lasted a lifetime. Neither of them could bear to leave the haven of the ship so he stoked up the fireplace in the library with enough logs to last until Christmas and they lay, wrapped around each other on the battered leather sofa and bathed in the glow. The flickering light spread her hair in a wave of molten gold over his chest and the hard angles of his face seemed softened, less severe in the gentle darkness. She made him laugh with stories of her childhood, little, inconsequential details like dew drops of history, strung out on a wire. He fed her so much chocolate she claimed to feel sick but the sparkle in her eyes when she closed her mouth around it was captivating, a secret pleasure. She smiled so much her face ached. He felt like he had never been alone.  
  
And gradually, by fits and starts, he told her about the war. It weaved its way into the conversation on the warp and weft of their relationship, a loose thread she had never untangled, never tried to unpick. She wasn’t sure how he started, the words slipping through the dancing firelight towards her like they had found a gap through the bars. Layer on layer of images falling in snowdrifts all around her, a soft blizzard of remembered pain. She didn’t speak, she let the words come, and she sat and she held his hand as he talked. His eyes glistened in the shadows, and she knew she was the first to hear this tale.   
  
When he had finished, he couldn’t remember why he hadn’t told her before. She was closer to him than anyone had ever been, so much an extension of himself it almost felt like he was explaining things she already knew, because she had lived them beside him. Her hand was a lifeline though the storm of recollection, holding him fast. Even after the end, she didn’t let him go. It was the last part of himself he had held back, he had given her everything else that mattered.   
  
In the heavy silken silence that wound around them she touched his face. ‘I love you,’ she said again.  
  
And he kissed her. His heart was peaceful, floating; he still knew the weight of the burden he carried, but it seemed to press more lightly on his shoulders. She could think of nothing else about him she needed to know.   
  
Caught in the net of bright radiance thrown by the fire, they discovered each other again, making love for hours, face to face, skin to skin. He kissed every delicate pore of her throat, shifted his lips over the supple firmness of her breasts, drew her nipples into his mouth as softy as the whispering breeze of summer. Her hands traced featherlight patterns on his chest, tripping over the taut muscles in his arms, going lower, reminding herself how smooth he was, how hard, how sure. His fingers slipped into her warmth with an assurance born of long practice, moving easily against her flesh as the lazy tides of orgasm washed over her. She lay on top of him, full length, looking down, lost in his eyes. He raised his hand to her cheek as he pushed her hips down, joined them together, sliding home.  
  
She lost count of the number of times she trembled, cried out, shuddered around him. His desire for her was without limit, and for every rushing satisfaction she gave him, there was another, and another just waiting to be set free.   
  
He stared at her, and ‘I love you’ was in his eyes, in the touch of his fingertips, in the beating of his hearts. She could taste it in his kiss. But the sadness of the tale he had told stilled his tongue and he was silent.  
  
Neither of them could bear to leave the haven of each other. The night of 21st December would last a lifetime. 


	22. Chapter 22

After 9am on the 22nd December the Doctor didn’t see Rose once all day. It was the longest time they had spent apart in a month. Already that morning they’d had goodbye sex. And a goodbye kiss. And then goodbye sex again. Eventually, he had had to put the bag of dirty washing into her arms and push her bodily out of the door. The engines were going before she had time to take more than a few steps away, and he was off, running for the stars before Jackie could hear the TARDIS and come to investigate. He had dropped Rose home for a bit of last minute Christmas shopping with her mother, and after twenty two days, he knew her well enough to refuse to go with them point blank. The endless loneliness of space didn’t seem so bad when Jackie Tyler was the only other option.  
  
But without Rose beside him, he found he was a bit lost. He paced the silent corridors of the TARDIS for a while, hearing only the echoes of sudden emptiness reflecting back at him, only the sound of his own footsteps breaking the quiet. This was how it had been before, he recalled. A solitary winding path, from death and desolation into uncertainty, hopelessness. Before he found her, before he found himself again.   
  
Several times, he thought he heard a familiar tread behind him, and he turned with a half smile, finding only absence, and an aching disappointment.   
  
There wasn’t anywhere he wanted to go on his own. He knew he should find a world to save, even if it was only a small one, but the joy of the saving seemed tarnished somehow, lacking someone to share it with. He retreated to the part of the ship that felt most like home, the engine that powered and supported his wandering. For once, he didn’t find it in the console room, not in the restless movement of machinery, but in sheets and in pillows, in the solid, secure comfort of their bed.  
  
The only fiddling with the TARDIS he could think of to do involved building her a bigger wardrobe because her clothes were scattered all over the floor again. He piled the abandoned jeans, the discarded t-shirts on top of the mattress, inhaling the scent of her that drifted heedlessly through the still air. He found he could remember the last time she had worn each one, the way she had arranged her hair, the turn of her face towards him as she smiled.   
  
It was going to be a long night. Luckily, there were an awful lot of cabinets to put up. So he parked a couple of hundred years away and tried to think of something to get her for Christmas while he mastered the art of flat pack furniture assembly.   
  
At lunchtime, she rang. ‘Guess where I am?’  
  
He thought for a minute. ‘In London. In a shop. In a changing room. Wearing something I’d like — yes?’  
  
He could hear her swear. ‘Just once, couldn’t you try to be a little bit less telepathic?’  
  
‘That’s not telepathy, it’s logic,’ he pointed out. ‘You’re ringing because you’re thinking about me. You’re out clothes shopping and you know exactly what sort of thing I like taking off.’ He paused. ‘I miss you, too.’  
  
‘I miss you’ didn’t cover it. An utterly inadequate expression to describe the sensation of a life on hold, of time hanging suspended, waiting.  
  
She let his comment fall into silence, then made a joke of it, awkwardly. ‘Hmm,’ she replied. ‘I miss parts of you more than others.’  
  
He wasn’t going to rise to that. Not yet anyway. ‘Rose, buy whatever it is you’ve got on and ring me back when your mother isn’t standing right outside the door.’  
  
He spent all day hanging round the phone like a teenage girl. She called him back much, much later.   
  
‘Alright, where are you?’ he asked in his best and-now-I’m-going-to-seduce-you voice.   
  
‘In my bed. On my own. Wearing my new outfit. What’ve you got on?’  
  
That was a very stupid question, as far as he was concerned. ‘Take a wild guess. Now — what are you doing?’  
  
‘What do you want me to be doing?’ she shot back.  
  
For the oncoming storm, that was a storming come on, and it worked every time. He swallowed. ‘Right. I want you to slide your hand down until your fingers are between your legs. You know where. Tell me when you’ve done it.’  
  
‘I’m there,’ she replied. ‘I wish you were.’  
  
He ignored her. ‘Now, off you go. Start slowly. Up and down. Gently. Imagine it’s me.’  
  
He heard her breathing start to come quicker. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now, side to side. A bit faster.’  
  
‘What are you doing?’ she asked on a sigh.  
  
He paused, guiltily. ‘Well, I’m listening to you touch yourself down the other end of a phone line and I’m here all on my own. What do you think I’m doing?’  
  
There was a muffled laugh.   
  
‘How come you can still speak anyway?’ he asked. ‘Go faster. And push down harder. I thought I already showed you how to do that properly?’  
  
Silence on the phone line for a long while, punctuated by occasional sighs and the sort of heavy breathing that some people would pay good money for.   
  
‘Doctor?’ she said at length. ‘I need to…’ She trailed off, and there was the horribly familiar sound of a button being pressed, and a buzzing noise that almost immediately got much fainter.   
  
‘I distinctly remember putting that in the bin,’ he said disgustedly.   
  
Her laugh was choked. ‘Mr Funboy and I have become very good friends,’ she replied, and the phone went dead.  
  
He rang her back. ‘Put me on handsfree then, if you must,’ he offered in resignation. ‘But you’re on your own with that thing.’  
  
‘Ummm, certainly am,’ she replied. ‘You’d be jealous if you could see me now.’ The electric humming noise was progressively louder and quieter in the background.  
  
His laugh was tinged with remorse. ‘Me? Jealous? Why?’  
  
She caught her breath, and he heard the whine of the motor shift upwards into second gear. ‘Well,’ she managed. ‘He’s got better technique. He never claims to be resonating concrete. And my mother would like him too.’  
  
He hung up.  
  
When she called back he could only tell it was her by the occasional cries and half moans echoing down the phone. ‘Rose,’ he said quietly, ‘let me hear you come.’   
  
And he did, although from the sound of it, Mr Funboy was having quite a good time too.   
  
‘Sweet dreams,’ he replied, as he replaced the receiver and after a brief distraction, went back to putting up shelves, and counting off hours.   
  
He hadn’t told her loved her. He had told her everything else. That would be enough. 


	23. Chapter 23

When the Doctor came out of the TARDIS on the 23rd of December, he noticed someone had pinned a very large, very conspicuous, very prickly holly wreath to the front doors. He stared at it for a while, wondering if this was some new form of alien attack — death by humiliation possibly — before tossing it in the nearest rubbish bin and heading upstairs. He had parked in his usual spot at the bottom of the block of flats, except that this time someone had left a shopping trolley in his space. He’d got out, and looked at it, hoping it was going to turn into a fiendish bit of hostile weaponry, before giving up, kicking it out of the way, and then reversing back in. Then it had occurred to him that he couldn’t just turn up to Rose’s house empty handed and he’d had to spend twenty minutes hunting for scissors and glue in the cupboard under the stairs.   
  
In all that time the TARDIS didn’t break, no distress calls were received, and the world didn’t teeter on the brink of ending. He was disappointed. He watched the sky through the window as he climbed the concrete staircases, looking for an invasion, a gigantic spaceship, or even a suspicious looking flock of pigeons to turn up and save him. It wasn’t going to happen. He knocked on Jackie’s door.  
  
The universe liked him after all — Rose opened it. He was so pleased to see her that he swept her into a tight embrace, practically lifting her off her feet in his eagerness to have her close to him again. One day spent apart was twenty four hours too long. He was busy showering her face with kisses when a terrifying voice, icy with disdain, froze him where he stood. The monsters had arrived at last.   
  
‘Take your hands off my daughter,’ said Jackie, from right behind him, and he dropped Rose like a hot potato, or an overly warm chip.   
  
Jackie advanced towards him, her face promising death and destruction, or at least, a really good slapping. He reminded himself that he was a nine hundred year old superior life form, privy to the secrets of time and space, and he wasn’t going to be intimidated by a woman in a lilac tracksuit.   
  
‘Rose told me exactly what you’ve been getting up to,’ she started.  
  
He shot Rose a look of pure and absolute horror, instantly deciding never to let her out of his sight again.   
  
‘And you can stop it right now,’ Jackie continued. ‘Chasing my daughter around all day when she’s really not interested. Shame on you.’  
  
Rose gave him the beaming, innocent stare of of a woman who knew she was in for trouble later and didn’t care.   
  
‘If you even think about coming anywhere near her while you’re here, I’ll be after you faster than you can say ‘dirty old man.’  
  
He believed her. If mauve was the universal warning for danger, lilac was what happened when the danger actually arrived. The smile plastered across Rose’s face made him think that not coming near her was going to be very, very difficult indeed. Glumly, he took the last look of a condemned man at the peaceful, completely normal, un-disaster-strewn day, and followed Jackie inside the flat.  
  
The Christmas card he had made was not a great success. He’d only been able to find psychic paper, and he’d been without Rose for a whole day — as it stared down at him from the mantelpiece he realised that Santa’s little helpers were helping Santa out a little too much. Ten minutes later, he was shoved out of the door again to go and get the Christmas tree, because, as Jackie said, that was a man’s job and he was the closest thing to a man they had. Rose suggested he lash the tree to the roof of the TARDIS, just to get into the spirit of Christmas, and he had to remind her in an undertone that he still had the lash he’d bought and it wasn’t too late for him to go and fetch it either.   
  
But when he arrived back at the ship, he found someone had put spray snow on the corners of all the windows in little triangular patches. He had to spend two hours with a toothbrush and a can of solvent scraping it off.   
  
Inevitably, Jackie didn’t like the tree he had fetched, even though it cam straight from the planet of Norway, ten thousand years in the future, when the inhabitants of that country had colonised a whole world in order to pursue the only thing they were actually famous for apart from fjords— growing Christmas trees. She went out for a plastic one instead.  
  
As soon as the door closed Rose grabbed his hand and tugged him into the bedroom. He wouldn’t have minded if it had been her bedroom. He looked at the frilly duvet cover. He closed his eyes. Opened them again only to find that sadly, nothing had exploded and he was still in Jackie’s bedroom with her daughter giving him the biggest grin he had ever seen. He shook his head with a desperation born of blind panic, but Rose went down on her knees and thirty seconds later he couldn’t have escaped if he’d tried.   
  
Ten minutes afterwards, lying on the flouncy bed, buried inside Rose, who was bouncing happily up and down on top of him, he heard the unmistakeable sound of a key in the lock, and he realised the world was ending after all.   
  
‘Just a couple of seconds,’ panted Rose, slamming down a bit harder, his fingers wedged between her legs. Jackie’s footsteps advanced down the hall and his hand was a blur as he tried to encourage Rose to finish quickly and get off him before her mother came in and caught him with his sonic screwdriver on display. At the very thought of it he found his enthusiasm for the whole adventure wilting, even more of a reason to give Rose a bit more encouragement. She was mercifully silent when she came, and time seemed to slow without any intervention at all while she got dressed, opened the door, and headed off her mother into the kitchen.  
  
But her rosy cheeks and dishevelled hair made Jackie suspicious and for the rest of the afternoon he was tortured. So much so that he started reminiscing about Utah dungeons with affection. The Destroyer of Worlds spent two hours in the kitchen dressed in a pink pinny, up to his elbows in flour, being lectured on how to make mince pies by his newly appointed mother in law. Another precious hour was spent up a ladder, fixing up tinsel and streamers, after he’d come across Jackie trying to hammer nails into the walls with one end of his beloved screwdriver. He endured a barrage of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ from the Tyler women, before he realised that the genetic disposition toward the sight of his backside up a ladder clearly ran in the family, and he climbed down in a sulk. He wrapped so many presents he was sure he’d be tasting sellotape for the next hundred years and there was enough glitter on his coat to make him look like a refugee from a 1970s glam rock party.  
  
He had met Daleks with more mercy than Jackie Tyler. At length, she was distracted by a crowd of people who had turned up to drink themselves into a festive stupor, and Rose said she was going to run a bath. He sat on his own in Rose’s shockingly pink bedroom and cursed the evil fate that meant that even if he killed himself, he would still regenerate and have to go back out and sing ‘Little Drummer Boy’ with the rest of Jackie’s coven.  
  
Then, Rose dragged him into the bathroom, locked the door behind them, and cheered him up considerably. She was entirely naked under her bathrobe, and the bath itself was filled to overflowing with bubbles and steamy hot water. He held her bare flesh against him, enjoying the way she tried to wriggle away from the roughness of his jeans, the coolness of the jacket he hadn’t felt comfortable enough to take off.   
  
He sucked her tongue into his mouth, giving it gentle bites with his teeth, making her squirm even more, before he bent her head back and kissed her to within an inch of her life. Deftly, she stripped him and put her finger on her lips for silence, but she led him over to the bath with her hand wrapped around the evidence of how much he’d missed her yesterday. He climbed into it, a bit of water slopping out over the sides, and there weren’t enough bubbles to hide his arousal, sticking up out of the steam.   
  
She leaned over the side and kissed it, and he reached out his hand to find her wet already, and waiting for him. She started to make little mewling noises as he touched her, the delicious sound of his fingers sliding inside her, stroking her intimately, carefully, as she found it harder and harder to stay still. With a sudden movement that caused as small flood over the side she climbed in on top of him, and he lay back, reclining against the cool plastic.  
  
Unfortunately, the disaster he’d been hoping for all day chose that moment to strike. She faced him, and she tried kneeling up, her legs folded flat on top of his thighs, but it was impossible to find a good position. Her legs were caught against his waist, jammed against the side of the bath and she couldn’t get low enough to seat herself on top of him properly. He was only an inch or so within her, jabbing upwards uselessly, seeking a better way in.  
  
‘Try harder,’ he begged.  
  
‘I’m not the one having problems with ‘harder’’ she reminded him.   
  
More water slapped onto the floor. There was a knock at the door, the tap-tap of terror, the banging crash of catastrophe coming to call.   
  
‘Rose? Are you in there? Alone?’ Jackie’s voice, managing to sound slurred and hostile at the same time.  
  
‘Yes mum’ she called, hurtling out of the bath, throwing his clothes back at him and pointing at the window. ‘He went back to the TARDIS hours ago.’   
  
He had no choice but to run. With only his jeans and his coat to cover his dignity, he opened the window and jumped out, finding himself back on the balcony in front of the flat. One of his boots sailed past his head. The other signally failed to follow. From his position crouched on the floor he heard Rose open the door and start spinning her mother a web of lies. He was obviously not going to be invited back in.   
  
He had to hop, one shoe off and one shoe on, back through streets still resolutely refusing to be covered in snow, sending out a silent prayer to anything that might be listening that the alien invasion he had hoped for wouldn’t turn up any time soon. It would take him more than four regenerations to live this one down.  
  
But when he got home he found that a string of red and yellow fairy lights had been tied around the big blue bulb on top of the TARDIS. It seemed that the Sycorax, the Sontarians, or whoever else it was had given up trying to kill him and were now attempting to annoy him to death instead. There was only one reason he was putting up with it.

 


	24. Chapter 24

Ten minutes before midnight. 24th December. A church, blazing with light and laughter, its candles casting sparkling shadows on the snow shrouded ground outside. Doors thrown wide despite the chill, a defiant trumpet call of music echoing against the watching starfield. A crowd, a band, a throng of revellers, gathered in tight knit circles of conversation, or scattered resting on the pushed back pews. A couple, dancing in the aisle to a slow rhythm only they could hear, her dress flashing white against his darkness.  
  
This time, he had got it right, the TARDIS behaving itself perfectly to deposit them in the right time and place for a party.   
  
‘So, what will happen if I don’t eat the turkey?’ he asked, just to make absolutely sure she meant what she said.   
  
‘We’ll have to stay till New Year’s Eve,’ she repeated. ‘I mean it.’  
  
‘Ah, the end of the world then.’ He nodded sagely. ‘I’ve seen a few of those. Think I’ll take my chances. It can’t be any worse than your mother’s cooking.’ He had to kiss the frown off her face.   
  
‘So when do I get my present?’ she asked, tightening her arms around his neck.   
  
It was his turn to frown. He’d been so busy avoiding Jackie all day on a series of pointless errands that he hadn’t managed to buy Rose anything at all. Plus, he’d had to spend the rest of his free time keeping an eye on the TARDIS, just to make sure no one went within twenty paces of it carrying tinsel. Still, he had another five minutes, and there was absolutely no point in being a Time Lord if you couldn’t come across a spare couple of hours down the back of the sofa to go Christmas shopping.   
  
Delaying, he responded: ‘As soon as I’ve had mine.’   
  
His heart sank as he watched her walk away to retrieve the little bag she’d insisted on bringing, wondering if he could reasonably get out, come up with the most fantastic gift ever invented, and be back before she noticed.   
  
She kept an eye on his slightly shifty looking face as she picked her way through the crowd, fully expecting him to go swanning off at any minute. She guessed that he hadn’t bought her a present, but there was only one thing she really wanted and she suspected he was never going to give her that anyway, no matter what she tried. She’d be happy with a new pair of trainers. She found the bag she’d brought with his present in it under a pile of coats. She’d bought it a couple of weeks ago, and she’d been absolutely sure she knew what she was doing, but walking back into the embrace of that ice-blue stare, she couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous. He had called out for help, even if he didn’t know it, and this was the only way she could think of to answer.   
  
She held out the bag sheepishly, and he took it, his eyes wide with wonderment. She didn’t know when he’d last been given a present; mostly he seemed to spend his time doing things for other people, rather than having them think about him. He opened the package, carefully lifting out the small red leather bound book like it was some priceless artefact. She felt vaguely embarrassed at the attention he was giving it. He opened the front page, read it. ‘Rose Tyler — Owner’s Manual’ it said.   
  
He raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged apologetically. ‘Thought it was a bit less cheesy than jumping out of a present.’  
  
‘Slightly less, maybe,’ he answered, flicking through the pages. ‘Why’s it blank?’  
  
She took a deep breath, held it, poised on the edge of a plunge, and dived in. ‘Because there aren’t any rules.’  
  
She had his undivided attention now, his eyes bright and sharp, boring into her as if he were trying to see through her skull, as he replaced the book in the bag, and the bag in his pocket. He had told her everything apart from the one thing she wanted to hear, the only thing he couldn’t bring himself to say. She knew, as sure as her heart was pounding through the walls of her chest, as sure as the shake in her hands, that he loved her. He couldn’t, wouldn’t admit it. But it was her only way to rescue him.   
  
She continued. ‘Because I trust you. I mean it. You can do anything you like. I know you won’t hurt me.’   
  
She threw his own words back at him. ‘And because I love your smile. You don’t smile enough. I know why, now. But I’d give anything to make you happy. Go anywhere you want. As long as you want me to.’  
  
There was a question she needed to ask. A question that had become more and more urgent since the touch of his strong fingers and the call to run had dragged her unprotesting from her old life, and into his. She couldn’t meet his gaze any more, and her voice dropped. ‘As long as you’re mine.’  
  
She could feel the burn of his stare for an instant before he took her hand, led her surefooted through the crowd and out into the snow. His mind raced fast enough to leave his mouth at a standing start, for a change. He had to find an answer, wasn’t sure whether the one waiting within him was the right one, the only one.   
  
He looked at her, watching him from under her eyelashes, her hair cascading around her face, impossibly precious. He would never tire of finding any excuse to take her in his arms and spend a couple of hours just looking at her. She shivered, standing in her thin white dress, luminescent in the patchy starlight, and he put his coat around her automatically. It was hers, whenever she needed it.   
  
He was a man who had nothing, and she had given him everything he had ever wanted. He had never found the courage to tell her how he felt, because he was far too much of far too many things that made him entirely wrong for her. And because of that ‘I love you’ was a selfish thing to say, when all he had ever wanted was to carry on making her happy, asking for nothing in return. He knew that he could live years with her, and it would never be enough time — he couldn’t honestly offer her forever. Nothing else was good enough.   
  
But she was part of him now, he’d let her in, and she knew the secrets he was keeping, because she’d re-lived them beside him, holding his hand, and she’d said she loved him anyway. She loved him despite everything he was, everything he had done, or perhaps because of it. ‘I love you’ was ‘stay with me’ and ‘take your chances’ and ‘no going back’ for both of them. He had had a glimpse of his life without her again, a life alone, suspended, waiting for something to happen. It felt like the end of the world. And as he stood frozen, overwhelmed by the depthless warmth of her eyes, he had never wanted so badly to take the gift she was offering, and have something to call his own. To answer her question. To have someone to belong to. He wanted to be saved.   
  
She was waiting for him to answer, like she had been waiting for him for twenty four days, or longer, each day giving him a bit more of herself, opening a door onto something new, a countdown to this moment.   
  
The church clock tolled midnight and the snow drifted lazily down from the skies, covering her hair in a veil of white. It was Christmas Day. No more days left on the calendar, at last, he had run out of time. He didn’t have forever to offer her, all he had was himself. He wasn’t sure if that would be good enough, but it was the only gift he had to give.  
  
‘I love you,’ he said, stroking away the snowflakes and the swift tears mingling on her cheek.  
  
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘And I love you.’  
  
He would have sworn it was the first time he had looked into her eyes, the first time he had bent his head towards her, the first time he had felt the soft brush of her lips against his. She knew she had never kissed him before, never opened her mouth to the gentle urging of his tongue, never breathed with him as one. This was a new dawn, the first day of a new lifetime and there was so much else that they could be together, apart from just lovers.  
  
He bowed formally, extended his hand. ‘Shall we?’ he asked, and without waiting for a response he swept her into his arms. As lost in her as she was in him, they moved together through the snowstorm.  
  
Rose and the Doctor, dancing. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have enjoyed this story, please consider reading my romance novels The Postman's Daughter and The Car Crash Bride by Sally Anne Palmer, available now on Amazon.

**Author's Note:**

> Please check out my romance novels The Car Crash Bride and The Postman's Daughter by Sally Anne Palmer available now in print or digitally on Amazon.


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